


drums

by Keturagh



Series: False Fruit [24]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Baking, Bratting, Daddy Kink, Dom/sub, Established Relationship, F/M, Kitchen Sex, Mindfuck, Skyhold (Dragon Age), Smut, Spanking, wooden spoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:36:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22058659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Relationships: Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel | Solas/Original Female Character(s), Fen'Harel/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Inquisitor, Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age)
Series: False Fruit [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579504
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	drums

She has bitten the nail down to the nub again, and when he notices he reaches out and holds her hand. She bites her lip, instead, and looks away from him back at the oven. He puts the ragged fingernail to his mouth - places a kiss. This slight touch harmonizes his whole being; the closeness he can share with her, he hears it when he sleeps. He hears it when he wakes. He hears it like his own pulse, chanting, drumming: _her, her, her._

“It’s not rising,” she says again.

He checks to where they watch Orlesian pan sweetbread bake in the little stone skillet.

“Give it time.”

This soothes her. She takes it as a command, however softly made, and her shoulders relax.

‘Give it time’ is a new phrase he has learned. As if the movement of her life to its end point is something she can gift away. As if the duration of a moment can be allotted, and received. Taken by something else. She _gives her time_ to the little stone skillet, to the sun going down through the door, and to the fire beading sweat on both of their necks.

Every new dawn he feels like he is begging: _give it time._

She starts to fidget again. He presses another kiss to her knuckles, and goes back to reading the book propped on his knee. He keeps her fingers in his, resting on the next page.

He would simply say, _“Patience,”_ but he has discovered that, in certain moods, this only infuriates her.

“Can you tell me more about the demons we last fought, coming up through the Emprise?”

He pauses in his reading and strokes his thumb, distracted, over hers. “There were four. A demon of Despair. Pride, as you no doubt remember. And two of Rage.”

“The Despair demon. You said once that Cole might once have been vulnerable to corruption into a Despair demon? But isn’t Cole a demon already — and he’s still Compassion. And yet, he kills.”

“Cole…” He feels his lips draw tight, and measures all he can and cannot say. “Is a demon by our definition of the term, and he is a spirit. Cole, if made to act against his purpose as Compassion, would have once perhaps found himself twisted into Despair. The intent of Cole’s action when he takes a life — this is Compassion.”

“I’m not saying I’ve never witnessed mercy killings. But…”

“I caution you, vhenan, to be careful how you think of him when he is near. It is unknown the extent to which Cole may yet be influenced by our perceptions of him.”

Pangara looks at him, curious. “Is he here now?”

Solas hesitates, touching out against the Veil to see if the particular lyricism of Cole’s presence vibrates within the room. “I do not sense Cole in this room now,” he says, “but that is not to say he did not visit us recently. Perhaps that is what brought you to this question.”

She reaches up and strokes the garlic suspended over the table where they sit. “Compassion. Cole kills for the greater good. Murders. He would kill hundreds, if I asked him to.” She notes the alarm in his glance and mollifies, “Not something I intend to do. But… what if I mess up? Would Cole — would he… change, on his own?”

“Ah. You are asking if atrocities can be committed in Compassion’s name. Certainly not. Cole kills the killers. He is a pacifying force, and acts only out of necessity.” He tilts the book mostly closed, keeping his place with a finger. “Atrocity is the product of intentional ill-will, of hatred. Unchecked rage or, too often, greed and self-interest. That is not who you are.” She nods, and he muses further. “A person who convinced others that compassion is the wellspring of their cruelty would be a fool at best, and a monster at worst.”

At that she looks at him sidelong and pointedly raises a brow.

“Solas, you sure that one’s an absolute truth?” she asks pointedly.

“Ah,” he stammers, “But not — to be certain, ah, for you I feel —” the flush of heat to his face feels peculiar and uncalled-for, “in that particular case — whatever we may…” And when he sees the way her lips curl up with glee, he reopens his volume and, intent on the next paragraph, says sternly, “Check the sweetbread.”

She leans over and kisses his cheek before she goes.

“It’s not rising,” she reports over her shoulder, miserably.

“Mm.” He grunts and raises the book, trying to parse if this glyph contains a scribe’s error, or if there really is a rune application for ‘rowing of boats’ in this fire casting.

She is brushing her fingers over the herbs bundled on the shelves when she asks, “Why does Cole keep to himself so much?”

“It is dangerous for Cole to remain around so many mortal influences.” He licks his thumb and turns the page. “Passions run hot. Not everyone is equipped with the tools to interact safely with him as a spirit. The forgetting is good, in that sense. It keeps him protected from further interest, and meddling.”

“You don’t forget him, do you.” She says it softly, and it is not a question. This is better; he does not feel obliged to make an answer and he pretends he has not heard, flipping to the back of the volume to check a reference and then returning to his place. A new style; he prefers the notes when they are copied beneath the body of the text.

Pangara saunters to the kitchen door and watches the light change; she fans herself and lifts the back of her hair to let off the heat. He watches her out of the corner of his eye. They are quiet together in a communion of passing daylight, a golden light suffusing the warm bricks of the kitchen and the heavy wood of the table. The sounds of fowl honking south came to them across clouds like ribs over the world. The sounds of nobles lingering after the evening’s feast chattering through the walls and a few flies have already found the little pile of dishes scattered with the remainders of crow, hog, ram, and sprouts.

She had said to Chef, “Just tonight, let me take care of things?” And he’d heard that it had been a full day of her wheedling before Chef had grunted and surrendered the kitchen to her stewardship. After she’d washed alongside the kitchen maids and washing boys until only an hour’s work remained for one person — she’d sent them all on, to sleep before the light of the next day would draw them out of their beds, back to their usual schedule of finishing the prep and starting the cooking for the next round of meals.

Their scene set, she brought him in from his work in the rotunda. Dirty dishes, a few ingredients, the oven still hot, and a kitchen to themselves. She had explained, and he’d had a good laugh, and then agreed to indulge her.

It is so rare that they have time to themselves. There is a constant rhythm of life that befuddles him, now. The echoes of life in this room, the belly of the fortress — hunting. Eating. Preparing. Cleaning. He always feels distanced when surrounded by this type of bustle. The consistency of motion, the chorus of unspoken commands — so many slight variations of “please move,” “I need that ladle,” and “hold this for a moment.” The confusion makes him feel like he still dreams, his soul apart.

And now the ghosts of that frantic labor are reduced to neat piles around them. Curing meat, sliced cheeses, and vegetables soaking for the morrow. The room is warm and the light shines on drifting specks of flour and dust. He watches his vhenan watching the sunset at Skyhold. His heart fills, regret and need and hope all so close together, and he thinks again, “I must tell her.” But the part of him that has always been a coward shrinks back, and just wants to watch her watch the world fall into shadow.

“If it’s not ready by now, it never will be.” She says.

He closes his book slowly and sets it on the table beside his knee.

“The smell is certainly appealing. The lavender comes through strong, but I can also detect the vanilla.”

She closes out the sunset and brings down the bar that locks the door. She crosses back over the room and swings the loaf paddle down from its hook. Metal scrapes along the stone bed as she hooks under the skillet and draws it out, balancing the little stoneware easily enough. She swivels and sets the sweetbread down on a pad next to him.

They survey the results.

She shakes her head. He tilts his gaze down to her.

He reaches out a knuckle and she watches him knock on the unyielding brick of its crust.

“Is this what I asked for, _da’len?”_

“No Papae.” She pouts, and he pushes his book further away, and at last the time has come.

He leans close her because her hair smells like the vanilla, sugar, and lavender she worked with. He stoops to breathe her in as he traces her ear with his lips.

She shudders.

“Is this task so difficult for you?”

“Yes, Papae. Apparently so.” She says.

He chuckles, and so near her ear it makes her sway slightly, leaning forward against him. He slips his hands down her arms and then holds her waist. She might lunge forward to grind against him but she stops herself — and then he reaches around, sinking his forehead to the crook of her neck, and squeezes her ass. He is already rigid, and if she notices his erection pressing up against his breeches she does not betray her attention.

He whispers, “Get the spoon for me.”

She convulses in the heat of one full-body shiver, and then another, and for a second he wonders if she — ? But she collects herself at once. She twists in his embrace and reaches around him and lifts, from behind him, from where it is tucked among various other long-handled tools: the wooden mixing spoon.

He tilts his head, still fondling the fullness of her ass in both hands, and sees that she can’t control her smile as she holds the spoon. It is a light wood, blonde, and it is heavier than a kitchen implement. The bowl is wider, at least her middle finger’s length across.

He traces one hand up to her mid-back, holding her lightly. Then, rough and sudden, he yanks her pants and smalls down over her ass and she cries out. He lifts her, grunts, sweeps her legs aside, angles her, and lays her over his lap. She’s too far up and he shifts her, scooching her down so that her backside is positioned squarely on his lap; his erection presses against the meet of her legs and she moans and wiggles, wicked. After allowing himself only a moment to enjoy her grinding, he reaches up and gives her ear a hard flick.

Her moan keens into a high-pitched whine.

“None of that,” he says, sternly, and plucks the spoon from her grasp. She settles, resentful, and he dips his fingers along the grain of the wood. Then he presses the spoon to her ass and circles it; he is only circling it, rubbing slowly on her skin.

“I was very clear on the ingredients, was I not?”

“Yeah you were, Papae.”

“But I saw you leave out the yeast, _da’len_. Did you do so on purpose?”

“Mm-mm Papae…” she says, but the way her voice drops coyly is his signal in this play, and he raps the spoon down hard on her ass.

“Aah!” She chirps, and he asks again.

“Did you _knowingly_ disobey me, _da’len?”_

“Yes,” she admits, and looks back at him over her shoulder with rebellion hard and glistening in her eyes and teeth. _“So what?”_

He strokes a hand over the curve of her ass. His cock is straining to move against her; he feels himself grown thick and heavy. But his mind is clear — possessed of a singular focus of purpose that makes it impossible for her to infuriate him with this insolence.

“So…” he circles the spoon. Taps it once.

Then in a double: tap-tap, just very light.

“So, I can only imagine you did so to an end. Did you… think I would not notice?”

“No.”

_Tap-tap._

“Did you think I would prefer this result?”

“No.”

_Tap-tap._

“Did you think you knew how to make the sweetbread better than the instruction I gave you?”

A pause.

She whispers, “Yes.”

_Whap._

He brings the spoon down once, twice, three times with a cracking that echoes off the stone bricks.

She writhes and cries out. He pins down her back with his other hand, smiling softly.

“Ah, _da’len._ The follies of _pride._ And for it, you will have a stinging bottom. Do you think the nobles in the hall will guess,” he wonders, grinning “when you limp past them at their gossip?”

She snarls and bucks, ass bobbing as she tries to scramble away, and he fists his hand into her shirt and drags her back, holding her across his legs roughly. The clay skillet and the inedible pastry crash to the floor and break apart, and she is making a yowling sound like an errant kitten.

“This punishment is not over, _da’len,”_ he warns.

She gives up struggling and collapses her head into her elbow; it’s a ridiculously exaggerated pout, and he withholds a chuckle. When she is resigned, he relaxes. Leans back and observes her already reddening backside, her disheveled clothing half-off, the rapid rise and fall of her back as she catches her breath. He is entirely at his leisure. He spins the spoon lazily between his fingers. He is calm; he might even seem indifferent to her… unless she could catch the flicker of tension as the smooth muscle of his forearm flexes.

“After this, you will wash the dishes.” He instructs. And then he brings the spoon down, and she squeals, and it turns to moans.

And he thinks of how he will take her from behind as she bends over the washing basin, his hand cupped under her chin, his other hand slamming her hips back against him, and he will tell her, “Mind the washing,” soothingly, as she wails and begs and moans, and as she keeps trying to work through the fullness and the ache of him pumping himself into her. He will ignore the desperate uncaging of his mind, his howling wants — he will be controlled, and not impulsive, and he will take her steadily and then — _thwack_ — and then… and _then he will fuck her, he will_ fuck _her…_

He is hot with sweat as her ass pinks beneath the spoon; the sky through the window reddens into night. She rubs on his lap. Her cries chorus with his drumming on her, of her: _tap-tap, tap-tap, tap, whap. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack._


End file.
